


Run

by aspermoth



Category: Total Nonstop Action Wrestling
Genre: Angst, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Inner Demons, Introspection, Self-Mutilation, violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:11:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspermoth/pseuds/aspermoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something inside Chris. Something coming for him. So he'd better run before It gets him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run

In its original form, the sin of wrath also encompassed anger pointed internally rather than externally.

~*~

Chris can feel It. Feel It twisting inside him, bubbling underneath his skin, burning through his bones. Feel It spreading through him, possessing him, filling him. It has to show. They must be able to see It, those people, those eyes. So many eyes. Watching him. Following him. Seeing right through him.

He has to get away from here. Away from the iMPACT! Zone. _Away_.

 _Matt, his friend Matt, yelling in his face, so angry, blaming him, and it is his fault, but he's sorry, he's so sorry_... No. Don't think about it. Don't remember it. Just... don't.

Just go.

Just walk away.

He feels their eyes on him, the hundreds – thousands? – millions, even? – of eyes that are watching him from every corner of the building, following him, gawking. He can feel their stares on him, hot and burning, searing through his skin – can they see It? – but he walks slowly. Slow and determined. Don't let them see fear. Don't let them see It. Stay calm. Don't run. He walks, walks until he feels the brush of the curtain across his face and arms, until he's sure that he's out of sight, until he's blissfully alone.

Then he _runs_.

Blinding flickering lights and twisting turning corridors and doors to left and right but people, people everywhere, nowhere is empty, nowhere is _safe_.

 _Run, Chris. Run._

He has to get away, to find darkness and silence and solitude and safety, before It takes him. It's swelling up inside of him, inside his chest, pressing against his rubs, crushing his lungs, stealing his very breath, and he has to be alone before It takes him over –  _keep running, Chris, keep running_ – but he's running out of time and-

An open door. Janitor's closet. Small, no light, nobody home. Just in time. He staggers in, pulls the door shut behind him and collapses to his knees amongst the mops and brooms and buckets.

Rocking desperately back and forth ( _make It go away_ ).

Hands buried in his hair ( _make It go away_ ).

Chest tight and breath coming short ( _make it go_ away).

 _It's coming._

He starts to rake his fingers across his scalp, pulling at his hair, ripping it out by the roots, but it's not enough, not enough pain, not enough punishment, not enough to drive It back – too much pressure – can't escape it.

He starts to groan.

He starts to _scream_.

And It takes a hold of him. Throws him to his feet. He loses himself to the darkness and knows nothing but Its rage.

When the darkness fades and the light returns, it's dim and faint, mere drags that crawl in through the spaces around the door like mould. He's on his knees once more, as though in supplication, knelt in the middle of that pathetic little space, surrounded by the fragments left in the wake of his destruction: broken shards of plastic buckets, the shattered remains of broom and mop handles, the hanks of his own hair. All broken. All sharp. All speckled rusty red. Blood?

He looks down at his hands. Skin torn and flecked with slivers of wood. The smell of it thick, claustrophobic, sickening. Blood alright. He stares down at them, rapt, numb to the pain. That will come later.

Did this drive It away? Was this enough to save him from It? What would have happened had he not found this place?

If It had got Lauren? Or Matt?

He starts to rock back and forth again but gently this time, the motion a familiar comfort rather than a means to escape, and he begins to moan softly as the numbness slowly fades and pain starts to return – his bloodied hands, his abused scalp, his throat raw from screaming.

They were supposed to stop this. They were supposed to make It go away. But they didn't. They never will. He runs his hands through his hair in frustration, again, again, smearing it with his blood, moaning. It will _never go away_. He can never escape this. Never get away from It. From this part of himself, this rage that destroys everything it touches – enemy, friend, self, _everything_.

He can never escape from this bloody, violent wrath.

He can never escape Abyss.


End file.
